A Life's Secret: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

'Eating!' returned Mrs. Hunter, 'I wish he did eat. For at least a fortnight—more, I think—he has not eaten enough to support a bird. That he is ill is evident to all—must be evident; but when I ask him what is the matter, he persists in it that he is quite well; that I am fanciful: seems annoyed, in short, that I should allude to it. Has he been here to consult you?'

'No,' replied Dr. Bevary; 'this is the first I have heard of it. How does he seem? What are his symptoms?'

'It appears to me,' said Mrs. Hunter, almost in a whisper, 'that the malady is more on the mind. There is no palpable disorder. He is restless, nervous, agitated; so restless at night, that he has now taken to sleep in a room apart from mine—not to disturb me, he says. I fear—I fear he may have been attacked with some dangerous inward malady, that he is concealing. His father, you know, died of——'

'Pooh! Nonsense! You are indeed becoming fanciful, Louisa,' interrupted the doctor. 'Old Mr. Hunter died of an unusual disorder, I admit; but, if the symptoms of such appeared in either James or Henry, they would come galloping to me in hot haste, asking if my skill could suggest a preventive. It is no "inward malady," depend upon it. He has been smoking too much: or going in at the cucumbers.'

'Robert, it is something far more serious than that,' quietly rejoined Mrs. Hunter.

'When did you first notice him to be ill?'

'It is, I say, about a fortnight since. One evening there came a stranger to our house, a lady, and she would see him. He did not want to see her: he sent young Clay to her, who happened to be with us; but she insisted upon seeing James. They were closeted together a long while before she left; and then James went out—on business, Mr. Clay said.'

'Well?' cried Dr. Bevary. 'What has the lady to do with it?'

'I am not sure that she has anything to do with it. Florence told an incomprehensible story about the lady's having gone into Baxendale's that afternoon, after seeing her uncle Henry in the street and mistaking him for James. A Miss—what was the name?—Gwinn, I think.'